Summer of Yarn Love Swap Questions

I joined my first yarn swap. I'm so excited! I have my first assignment, to answer the following questions:

1. I knit much more than I crochet. I've been taught to knit several times but the time that stuck was probably in 2000.
2. No spinning for me, although it seems cool.
3. I love natural fibers and hand-dyed yarns. I probably have expensive taste in yarn. Although I'm always swayed by "fun" yarns and sale yarns and nice-fiber yarn... I'm not sure what my least favorite yarns are, maybe acrylic, or anything from the 70s. 
4. I tend to like blues, greens, and browns for color. I don't really have a least-favorite color, everything is fine.
   
5. I'd love to work with Schaefer Judith, but that's only because of the name :) 
   
6. I just learned to knit socks, so they're my new favorite. I seem to make a lot of blankets, but hats and scarves are nice because they're quick. 
   
7. I'm currently working on some socks, my first pair of baby socks, and a baby blanket. 
   
8. Hmm, I'm not sure what my favorite FO is. I made an adorable baby cardigan for a friend a few years ago, it had the cutest frog buttons. 
   
9. My oldest UFO came from my grandmother. I have all of her UFOs as well as my own. I have plans to finish her baby blankets one day.
10. I can't think of any techniques I want to learn since I just did my sock class, there will be more in the future.
    
11. I am on Ravlery. 
    
12. I am currently a sock knitter, but a new one. I'm not sure what foot measurements I need to provide, I have a tiny foot, I wear a size 5. 
    
13. I appear to collect yarn :). 
14. I have a yarn winder and a swift.
15. I love sweets and I have a real weakness for Swiss chocolate.
    
16. Hmm, my favorite scents, gardenia and honeysuckle. 
    
17. Oh, I keep my needles everywhere. Most of them are in a drawer, some are in a bag, and many have projects cast on. 
18. I have an Amazon wishlist, but I doubt it's that interesting. 
19. No summer birthday for me.
20. I'm allergic to dust, but that's it.

Yarn confessions

1. I hoard yarn. Each skein has a project it belongs to, but I can't pass up a texture or color that I adore. At least I'm migrating to socks so it'll only be one skein per project.

2. I work on too many projects at a time. This goes with the too much yarn thing, I cast on a fun project, and then get side-tracked a few weeks into it.

3. I am reading knitting mysteries, how nerdy is that?

4. I am scared of making complicated projects. I don't know why, when I start one, it goes fine, but I seem to worry about them an excessive amount (seriously I just made an entire garter-stitch sweater and blanket, boring).

5. My ravelry projects rarely go up before they're done. I'm trying to plan some out now, but we'll see. 

6. Finally, I love kitchener's stitch! The toe of my first sock looks a little stupid (I think it should be round), but I really wanted to do kitchener's.

Our first plane trip

This past weekend we went to Austin for my grandmother's 90th birthday. A trip to Austin required either a 2 hour plane trip (straight thank-goodness) or many, many hours in the car. We decided to go for the plane trip.

The trip out was great. Stephen cried a little, but not much. Mom, Dad, and I all sat in one row so I had people to help me hold him. He ate, he looked around, he napped.

The trip home was not so great. As I said "some damn baby cried the whole flight." Unfortunately, that baby was mine. He slept through take-off and then pretty much cried the rest of the flight. I still don't know what was bothering him: ears, gas, bored? Whew, I will never, ever get mad at anyone with a crying baby again. And to all the other passengers, I'm sorry, I really am, and if it helps, I was probably more upset by it than you.

More infant life

Phil (giving me a kiss): You smell nice, are you wearing perfume?

Me: I took a shower.

Phil: silence

Mother's Day

Flowers

Mobile

Today was my first Mother's day. My family sent me some books about Stephen including the Rookie Moms book and . My sister sent me some beautiful flowers (irises and lilies), my mom bought me a mobile that Stephen and I could share, and my husband (and son) got me a sock-knitting class (I started my first pair of socks and Stephen can wear them when he's about 4). Woo presents! :)

Rug shopping with a 2 month old

In honor of the Rookie Moms contest, I thought I'd write about Stephen and I rug shopping. I decided (while pregnant) that we needed a new living room rug, but I didn't actually start searching until Stephen was born. 

The first step was measuring the current living room rug (long-since destroyed by the two cats and house-breaking two dogs). Then we went to several stores to look at rugs, see which ones we liked, and how much we could plan on spending. This activity took up many days and required a spiral search pattern starting at our house so quick trips could be made home for extra-fussiness, feeding, whatever Stephen wanted, etc. We narrowed it down to three stores and visited them more times than I'd like to admit to compare rugs, colors, and prices. Each time I got to a new store, I'd curse and realize I had just taken my camera out of the diaper bag (and my phone camera doesn't really take good pictures of 8' x 10' rugs). The inherent problem is my pickiness. I want the rug to be light enough that you can't see the dog hair (a major problem with the old one), colorful enough that it looks good, and still match the rest of the room. Stephen was consulted on each rug we saw what he thought of all these qualities. Needless to say, some crying was involved on both sides.

Rug-testing is kind of an embarrassing thing to do in a store. I stopped short of putting Stephen on it to kick around to see if he'd like them, but I feel you need to sit on the rug, walk on it shod and unshod, feel it, and be able to jump from one to the next to compare them. It's best to do this in the middle of the day when the least amount of people are at the store.

Then my mother-in-law got involved and sent me some rug suggestions she found as well (now the search spanned two states). Despite the temptation just to tell her to buy what she wanted and we'd make do, she did send me pictures. The pictures spurred yet another round of looking at rugs and deciding what we wanted, and a complete reevaluation of size (we did go with the smaller ones she suggested).

Finally, I picked on out I loved, it was light but not white. It was affordable (I fell in love with one that was small and $600, this clearly wasn't a good investment in the land of pets and babies). It had a lot of color in it, and when I went to buy it, they only had the size hanging up. This was larger than 8' x 10' and reflected accurately in the price. So, I feel back on my second choice and ended up withe a runner that goes outside the nursery too. The picture is the new rug with Tucker sleeping on it, and Seismic (one of the cats) has already begun to claw the runner.

2 month visit

Friday was Stephen's 2 month check-up. He was 23" long, 12 lbs 6 oz, and had a head circumference of 36.5cm. He got his first round of vaccinations (and did not enjoy them). He looks great and he's growing nicely :)

Bug Porn

Our local newspaper had a picture of bug porn on the front of the local section. It's two crane flies mating. The article is about how they aren't mosquitoes, don't bite, and what people think of them. I'm a little bit embarrassed this is "news" in our paper, but I'm also very fond of the phrase "bug porn" so I posted it.

The picture is from the Tennessean and here's a link to the story.